It was an emotional day for over 800 students at Garapan Elementary School after learning they lost thousands of dollars worth of precious equipment and other instructional materials to burglars, who struck not once but twice this week.

GES principal Paulette Sablan disclosed yesterday that the school was victimized twice on the mornings of Sunday and Monday. Over $10,000 worth of new computers and other equipment were stolen in both incidents.

Sablan said that a school security guard discovered the break-in early Sunday morning in one of the fifth-grade classrooms. The burglars took off with five iMac computers and an LCD projector-all brand new and recently issued-estimated at about $8,000.

The perpetrators forcibly entered by breaking the backyard fence and the classroom's metal window, then pushing the wooden board that was blocking the window slide.

GES has only one 24-hour security aide detailed to watch over more than 40 classrooms and other facilities.

According to the security log sheet, the security aide did a routine round of the area an hour before the incident early Sunday morning.

Sablan and school officials immediately reported the Sunday incident to police and accompanied authorities in their inspection and investigation of the incident.

Yesterday, Sablan received a call from her kindergarten teacher around 7:30am reporting another burglary. This time, over $3,000 worth of school equipment were stolen, including a desktop computer, a laser printer, teacher resources, cables, and chargers. Also found missing was the teacher's personal laptop.
Due to the lack of classrooms, GES accommodates its kindergarten classes at the MIHA Housing units behind the school campus. Sablan said the burglars broke the doorknob of the main entrance. Police authorities were called again to probe the incident.

Saipan Tribune learned that the burglars also tried to enter other classrooms but were unsuccessful.

Acting education commissioner Glenn Muña was at the campus yesterday, checking out the school's situation. In coordination with principals, he immediately implemented emergency measures to ward off future burglaries. Sablan refused to disclose these new measures, citing the safety of students.

According to Sablan, GES has not had any burglary incidents for many years. “We haven't gone through this for many years and it's so long that I don't even remember,” said Sablan, who has been with GES for nine years.

She described yesterday's mood on campus as “emotional” after students returned from a long weekend only to be met by the sad news.

“We're very disappointed because not only did they come in and steal the things owned by PSS but they also came in and invaded the privacy of our students. By taking those computers, they also walked away with works of students that cannot be replaced, including teachers' strategies. We have been working hard to come up with creative ways to provide these materials to our students and for whatever reason they did that, it's very sad,” said Sablan, who appealed to the community for help.

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This blog covers the issue of computer and DATA theft. As editors of this blog, we seek out and provide published articles from freely available news and wire report & information sources. The loss of personal data via an act of physical hardware theft is increasingly a serious problem and is growing at an alarming rate. The sheer size of this blog attests to the growing problem.

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